We have seen on the map, and on highway direction signs, and on the top of buildings the name Passo Falzarego, and every time I try to remember it, it's turned into something else. I can get the Passo bit, but the rest becomes anagrams and abstractions of the actual name. Added to that, being in Italy / Austria, there are two name versions of each place on the road signs, and the Italians choose to change the spelling on a daily basis.
I am not going crazy, just old, forgetful, diseased, distracted.
The Passo (a pass in the mountains) is 2100 m above sea level, and its at the base of a vaulting mountain Lagazoui. The cable car takes you the 800m up to the peak, and what's called a Rifugi (refuge).
But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Cortina lies in a delightful valley, pretty much in the centre of the Dolomites. The mountains soar all around you with jagged bare rock 600 metres down to the green line. From there, heathers and conifers cling to the slopes, vertically striped with cascades of broken and eroded limestone forming rock slides and water courses that snake down to the less steep areas.
Here and there you see grassy clearings of the pine tree stands, that are the tell tales of a ski slope for beginners or have a ski lift posts and cables driven up the middle. Everything, save the frosting of snow, the weathered craggy limestone and the evidence of man, is green.
Hotels, that all look similarly built in the Austrian style, dot the slopes up from the town centre. Bagged and painted brick and wooden structures, shutters and window boxes, A-framed roofs. Our hotel room is pinewood panelled and smells like freshly sawn Oregon fir.
Cortina and this part of the north of Italy have a chequered history, suffice to say that the region was last wrested from Austria at the end of the first world war. The Austrian influence is still strong, everyone speaks Italian and German (except us and the Yanks). The tourist information people speak Italian, German, French, English, Japanese and Spanish, all while drinking a glass of water!
Maybe I should use my high school german ( Ein Tasse Tea Bitte)...
nah!
It's Not -- Ah
Today we got a hire car, it's a Fiat Panda, 1.1 litre (3 and a half stubbies). It's not an Italian police car (not black and white, or Panda), and it's not got any guts, and it's not very big, and it's not right-hand-drive, and it's not hard to park, and it's not nearly as expensive as the other rental cars, and it's NOT CHEAP!!
Still, I navigated Panda the 30 odd Km's out of Cortina, south to the Passo, and further.
The road is winding, a few hundred metres at a time, zig zags up climbing gradually out of the valley.
Bikers of all sorts, some with Harleys and colours, in groups of 3-12, all wearing the standard Dry-Rider clobber because the air is so cold when riding, pull around us as we climb up the road. There are hundred of bikes here.
In the last few days we have met up with many people, most are Yanks, looking for 'hiking' experiences, equipped with their backpacks and hiking sticks. The Dolomites are full of opportunities for people to move around on foot, climbing tracks and even ropes and ladders set permanently into the rocky inclines are everywhere. The tracks are dotted with Rifugi, outposts (really Bars / Ristorantes with sleeping bunks) that hikers can make use of.
Some of them are at the peaks of the mountains, like the Passo Falzarego (yep, had to look up the spelling). These people are far to exhuberant for my liking. I get dodgy at the top of a ladder.
We took the cablecar from the passo to the Rif. Lagazoui. It's the most amazing ride, all over in just a few minutes, but a real hoyk, up 800 meters to the 2900m summit.
For the first time ever, unplanned, and before I got to be 50, having not touched snow before, I shuffled and stomped around in snow on top of a mountain, and made a crude snowball. It's not life changing, but I have ticked off a bucket list item. To add to that, I toasted the event with a beer, at the top of that mountain.
Sheryl laughed off the idea of joining the mile high club, but having nowhere to go anyway, we laughed together. Besides, I think you are supposed to be a mile above the ground.
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